The Operative (A Star Trek novel)

Chapter Twenty-One

"Well, aren't you the dandy," McCoy says.

The three of them are in what Mrs. Yakob calls her "drawing room." It is a tiny room at the front of the flophouse, its dingy windows looking out onto the shady commerce always underway in this part of town. The carpet looks like it has been chewed on by moths, but that they finally gave up. Or maybe starved to death. Perhaps it was once red, or maybe green, or possibly it has always been that ugly shade of brown. There is wallpaper on the walls, something Kirk hasn't seen for a long, long time. Flowers and pineapples. Large. Repetitive. Slightly maddening. The furniture matches the room perfectly. That is, it is equally hideous.

Kirk fingers the cheap material of his new wine-red pants.

"These old things?" he says. "Just my working clothes."

"I take it you're in?"

"I'm in." He catches himself before he can add "like Flynn." That thought only reminds him of the late spy, and his missing crewmen.

"Have you found out anything?"

He sighs. "Not a thing. Ligo—my contact—has hinted that there's going to be a big 'job' next week involving some scientific equipment."

"A government lab?" Spock asks.

"I don't think the local mafia is stupid enough to take on Ocht." He shakes his head. "But they are pretty stupid, come to think of it. Did you send that credit chit like I asked?"

"I dropped it off at the jewelry store on the way to work," Spock said. "No one saw me. May I ask what it was for?"

"My conscience," Kirk replies. "Speaking of your job..."

Spock shifts in his chair, looks out the window.

McCoy can no longer stand it. "What is it with you and that job, Spock? Those VR cubes you sell some kind of kinky stuff, or what?"

"I would rather not discuss it, Doctor," Spock says.

"I know, Spock," he grins, "I know."

Seeing that Kirk is also not going to let it rest, Spock sighs.

"If you two must must know..." They nod, grinning. He sighs again. "Very well. The cubes are Dadaist fantasies."

A look of vast disgust—at least for a Vulcan—crosses his face.

"We Vulcans are quite tolerant of what other cultures call deviant tastes. We value infinite diversity. But nonsense is so antithetical to everything our society is built upon." He shakes his head in an almost human manner. "No, Doctor, I wish they were some sort of extravagant porn; that would not bother me in the least."

Kirk finds himself both amused and somehow disappointed. "Anyway, what have you learned?" he asks.

"I finally managed to break into the more secure areas of the planetary net. I was able to gather from indirect references in e-mail between some of Ocht's minor functionaries some idea of where one of the Federation or defense industry laboratories might be. I shall endeavor today to break in again to pinpoint it more exactly. Unfortunately, the net uses a shifting security scheme that makes a second intrusion as difficult as the first. However, at least I now know it can be done."

"Great, Spock. Keep us informed. Bones?"

"I don't have anything blatant, either, I'm afraid. However, I nosed around the medical records at the hospital, and judging by the amount of drugs and other medical supplies that have been leaving the hospital, and the number of ambulances ferrying doctors to the same code-named location, I'd be willing to bet there's a large group of people somewhere relatively nearby who are being kept together and tended to on a regular basis."